Walter Groth was born in Louisiana in July 1924. He was born and raised on a beef cattle farm in Elton, Louisiana. His father gave the crop away during the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. They almost lost the farm, but someone gave his father enough money to plant the next year’s crops. He played basketball in high school. When he graduated from high school, he went to Louisiana Tech [Annotator’s Note: Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana] on a basketball scholarship in 1941. In December of 1941, Pearl Harbor happened [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] and then he went into the service. He volunteered for the Army. He had some friends in the Army. He wanted to go to West Point [Annotator's Note: United States Military Academy in West Point, New York] to make the Army a career. He went to West Point in July 1942. After the first semester, he was transferred to a line unit, and then he was sent to OCS [Annotator's Note: officer candidate school]. He was commissioned in 1943. Then he went to Camp Edwards in Massachusetts. Then he went to San Francisco [Annotator’s Note: San Francisco, California] from where he was shipped overseas as a replacement.

Walter Groth landed in Leyte [Annotator’s Note: Leyte, the Philippines]. He saw General MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] come to shore there. The Japanese were determined to run them out. Groth was lucky he did not get hit. It did not take long to establish the beachhead. General MacArthur was moving along the north side of New Guinea so that they could go to the Philippines. Groth did not want to do certain missions. The noise scares you because it is so loud. They landed just after daylight. The Navy had been shelling it for a while. Groth was in the water up to his shoulders before he made it to the beach. The shorter men were having trouble. They made it to the beach and they did not lose anyone in the water. It took several days for them to get their guns. Most of them got jungle rot and malaria. Groth had malaria. When he got home, the malaria came back every summer. There was a small amount of combat. The Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] did not give them too much trouble. They were further in where the infantry was keeping them. The artillery pieces were 90 mm. They fired as a long range weapon. They were used for close support later in the war. The Japs were closing in and they moved the guns forward. Groth thought this job was fun.

Walter Groth remembers the Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] had a great Air Force. Later in the war, they got into the kamikaze [Annotator's Note: Japanese suicide bombers] business. When Groth was on Leyte [Annotator’s Note: Leyte, Philippines] they were pulled out and sent to Mindoro [Annotator’s Note: Mindoro, Philippines]. As they were headed there, the kamikazes got on top of them. The kamikazes flew over them and went after a ship. They landed in December [Annotator’s Note: year unspecified[. There was a fireworks display on Christmas Eve. The Jap Navy came in and started shelling them on the beach. They were using phosphorus shells [Annotator’s Note: white phosphorus mortar bombs, shells, rockets, and grenades were used extensively by American, Commonwealth, and, to a lesser extent, Japanese forces, in both smoke-generating and antipersonnel roles]. Groth had to take one of his men to the hospital because a phosphorus shell went off and the man was burning alive. They had to cover the man in mud and take the phosphorus out with tweezers.

Walter Groth [Annotator’s Note: stationed in the Philippines] provided fire support in the beginning. Then they were shooting at airplanes. The 158 [Annotator’s Note: possibly the 158th Regimental Combat Team] had jungle training. The casualty numbers were high. The Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] were eating them up. Groth was attached to the 41st Division [Annotator’s Note: the 41st Infantry Division]. When they went into the Philippines they were with the 24th Division [Annotator’s Note: the 24th Infantry Division] in the Eighth Army. The Japs were masters at personal fortifications. There were places they had bombed and shelled and they survived. The Navy and the planes were shelling so much that they thought no one could survive that. The Japanese taught them a lot about personal protection. Groth’s men did suffer some casualties. When things on Mindoro [Annotator’s Note: Mindoro, Philippines] settled down, they were shipped to Luzon [Annotator’s Note: Luzon, Philippines]. Groth was with the 44th Division [Annotator’s Note: the 44th Infantry Division] again. They estimated that there were seven or eight thousand Japs, but it turned out to be way more than that. They landed on one side of the island and wanted to get to the other side. They had blown out all the bridges. They had trouble getting to them. Groth and six of his men were assigned to the Filipino guerillas. They stayed busy.

Walter Groth remembers that military intelligence had underestimated the number of Japanese on the island [Annotator’s Note: Luzon, Philippines]. They were outnumbered. Filipinos were still living in the area. It was hard to tell if they were Filipino or Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese]. It was amazing how ingenious the Filipino women and children were. They used bamboo, gunpowder, and nails to fight. They helped the Americans a lot. They would set traps on the roads and trails. The Filipinos could get the Japs to talk. Angry G.I.s [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] are mean. The 41st Division [Annotator's Note: 41st Infantry Division] had a platoon leader on patrol. The Japs got them and strapped them to coconut trees. They used them for bayonet practice. They skinned the lieutenant alive while he was strapped to the tree. They sent the staff sergeant back to the outfit. They did not skin him, they told him to tell his outfit this would happen to the rest of them. The men were told from that point forward that they would take no more prisoners. Wherever they could avoid it, they did not take prisoners. They were within their six-mile radius for about three months. They had control of the bypasses. They did a good job getting rid of the Japs from the area. It was early 1944. They landed in Leyte [Annotator’s Note: Leyte, Philippines] in October. Getting to shore was not bad. Once they got to shore it picked up steam. They were pulled out and sent further down the beach. After that, they went to Mindoro. The landing was easy. The Japs bugged out. The engineers built an airstrip there. Any plane could land there. They saw some planes that came back shot up. Groth saw a P-47 [Annotator's Note: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft] and he could tell they were in trouble. The plane was not flying well and it crashed.

Walter Groth remembers the Jap [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] fleet came back in on Christmas Eve [Annotator's Note: year unspecified but probably 1944]. They had three troop transports in the harbor. The pursuit planes made three runs. One run with small arms, and two more runs with just automatic weapons. Then the Jap fleet took off. The Japanese made some stupid mistakes. The Americans got low on ammo. Their commander insisted they pull back. They had 16 guns to fire. They fired them at the same time. When they fired, there would be four rounds going out. They made a lot of kills. Groth’s battery had about 40. They were there for a long time. Groth does not remember when they got to Luzon [Annotator’s Note: Luzon, the Philippines]. They were putting ammunition on a barge and taking it out to sea and dumping it. When Groth heard that, he was mad. He thanks God every day that he is still here.

Walter Groth was discharged in Texas. He turned in everything. The war was over. The war had ended when they got out. Groth had a .45 pistol and he turned it in. He did not have any paperwork for it, but he turned it in. He was ready to go home. He did not know what the atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] were. There is no telling how many lives it saved. They were training for the last stand in Japan. He thinks it would have been their last show and they would have gone home in boxes. They had a second lieutenant who was a replacement. He did not have enough points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home] to go home as Groth did. He was sent to Japan for occupation duty. The Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] had holes in the mountains and put railway guns in them.

Walter Groth thought he would not have been there if it was not for the war. He was headed into certain death. He was a second lieutenant in combat and he grew up pretty fast. They did not throw up their hands and quit, but there were days he would have liked to. The war was one of the greatest things that ever happened. They were fighting on their turf, and not tearing up his country. There are several things he would have done differently if he had not fought in the war. He has no regrets. For a long time, he felt the same as General Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.]. If they would have taken the Russians, it would have saved Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. Groth does not think the fighting is over. He hopes the next generation preserves what they did. America will fight back if they are put up against a wall. He thinks the museum [Annotator's Note: The National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] is a wonderful thing. They always tried not to dwell on the bad things. One time, they did not get mail for a month. They heard Tokyo Rose [Annotator's Note: nickname given by Allied servicemen to any English speaking female radio personality broadcasting Japanese propaganda in the Pacific Theater] on the radio say their mail was rotting on the beach in New Guinea. The morale of the troops is what kept them going. They had rations. They had fresh meat sometimes. They had clams. They started shipping bully beef [Annotator’s Note: Bully beef was tinned corned beef with a small amount of gelatin] in cans. They did not have fresh vegetables. They got steak and french fries, and a bowl of ice cream. The German POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war] were serving them.